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In the sixties when I went to Primary School we still wrote with a dip pen, called a “kroontjespen” (literally translated: “little crown pen”) on a long wooden stylus and Indian ink on paper for our writing. It was a transition period, because a few years later we all wrote with fountain pens and ballpoint pens, even up to University.

I have fond memories of that time, although the school was a bit strict in its lessons in Christian upbringing (in fact Bible class). There were non-Christian (neutral) schools as well, but those lacked in educational quality.

Anyway, I used that same type of dip pen to draw this cartoon of a kettle. I even wrote the word “Kettle” as a caption in the style I learned how to write in primary school.

As a comparison, see how I drew the same kettle on January 26 of this year, 2009.

At that time, I even thought it was quite good, but now I can see so much wrong with that old sketch. I’m sure six months from now I will be thinking the same of the current ink drawing, which I now think is quite good.

I have to admit, though, that for the inked drawing I made two sketches, and only inked the second sketch, because the first wasn’t on model (too tall). I guess it’s always good to draw several versions of a subject and pick the one you think is best, or suits your needs best. Six months ago I was still in the phase of: “Well, I drew the darn thing, so I’m done, right?” Obviously wrong, because the kettle is drawn too tall in the pencil drawing.

Now don’t assume by looking at the ink drawing I have any kind of steadiness in my hand. I’ve cleaned up the scanned drawing quite a bit. Is that cheating? I don’t know. All I know is that I can only show you a digital representation of my drawing on this blog, so why not make use of that fact. Both analogue and digital drawing are made by yours truly.